One-Point Safety

I've been watching football for about thirty-five years and I've just seen something that I'd never seen previously, the one-point safety in college football.  It happened in the 3 January Fiesta Bowl game with Oregon achieving this point against Kansas State.  From Mike Cole of NESN:

Football fans tuning into the Fiesta Bowl on Thursday night may have been left scratching their heads at one of college football’s rarest plays.

The fast-paced Oregon offense steamrolled Kansas State for the win, but in one of the rare times the Ducks slowed things down — for an extra-point attempt — we saw something we hadn’t seen since 2004: the one-point safety.

K-State was able to block one of Oregon’s extra-point attempts during the Ducks’ 35-17 win. With college rules, teams are able to attempt to return blocked kicks for scores. However, they’re apparently also liable to being forced into a safety. That’s exactly what happened to the Wildcats. After the blocked kick, a K-State player grabbed the bowl, and eventually retreated into his own end zone as he was chased down by the Oregon PAT unit. The player was eventually taken to the ground, but not before he tried to lateral the ball to a teammate. The ball skidded toward the back of the end zone where another K-State player fell on it.

The result? A safety — a one-point safety. It was the first one-point safety since 2004. Coincidentally,Brad Nessler, who had the call Thursday night for ESPN, was in the booth for the 2004 one-point safety featuring Texas and Texas A&M.

 Here is the Texas and Texas A&M video linked above.  The announcers are bemused!



5 January 2012